Refracted Modernity

2. The Beauty of the Untamed: Exploration and Travel in Colonial Taiwanese Landscape Painting

2 hsin-tien liao The Beauty of the Untamed ExplorationandTravelinColonialTaiwanese LandscapePainting DiscoveringTaiwanbeneathitseconomicandexoticexteriorwasapopular trend both before and after the period of Japanese Occupation. Exploration and travel to little-known destinations could be interpreted as a kind of expansionism with an imperial desire.1 In an untamed environment, such travel becomes more exciting and enticing, because conquest is an obvious goal. Walking on the untamed land is about undertaking a physical and psychological journey to the goal of civilization. Overcoming the wildness like this is a symbolic triumph of modernity. Consequently, landscape painting can be viewed, to some extent, as an extension of this desire for conquest. The evolution of the painter’s representation of landscape, from emancipation to naturalization, and then to unification gives, in W. J. T. Mitchell’s sense, a vivid picture of imperial power as well as being a hegemonic aesthetic construction.2 Fujishima Takeji (1867–1943), a well-respected Japanese oil painter, exclaimed while traveling and painting in Taiwan in 1934 that colonial Taiwan was “a virgin place preserved for us painters.”3 If we look at the following facts, we see that his comment was not merely an emotional reaction at finding a treasure worth painting. This was the thirty-ninth year of Japanese colonization, which was a generally peaceful stage after the earlier period of military oppression.4 This period saw the introduction of the phenomena of modern life,5 including the formation of Taiwan’s industrial-capitalist society.6 Annually for eight years, an official exhibition called the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (Taiten) was held, with exhibits by a record number of Taiwanese fine art graduate students returning from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.7 All in all, it was the zenith of the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. Taiwanese Western-style landscape painting , which emerged during the period (from about 1910 to the 1940s),8 was 40 | hsin-tien liao also affected by the sociopolitical development introduced by the Japanese. “The untamed land” in this sense is not only a description of a primitive place, but also of a place that is developing from chaos to order, from order to leisure. That is to say, this is a process of modernization that moves between tension and relaxation. Therefore, Fujishima partly reveals the complex imperial desires evident in painting. We could view painters walking on untamed land as a contradiction. Their gaze seeks ideal places, and their hands prepare to capture the beauty of their surroundings. The final result appears when they have “combed out” the unnecessary and crystallized the valuable through visual expression . Delight comes perhaps from spotting an exotic place suitable for portrayal in an ideal visual scheme. Walking on a land under “domestication” seems to be more pleasant than walking through a land that is already civilized. Furthermore, painters employ scientific techniques to subdue the untamed and show their achievement through expressions of precision and beauty. The evaluation of beauty is dependent on the wildness but ultimately is ascribed to the way “nature” has been conquered. Moreover, landscape painting is intertwined with the projection of modernity , democracy, and freedom. The landscapist occupies the position of a “problematic” traveler or an anti-tourist. The sites chosen are deemed part of a larger communal framework.9 This chapter will show that, placed against the historical background of Japanese imperial colonization, a certain type of Taiwanese landscape painting suggested a kind of a “paradoxical harmony,” an oscillation between uniqueness and generalization. Both exploration and travel played important roles in shaping Taiwanese landscape painting and enlarge our understanding of how outdoor sketching was perceived in Taiwan. The significance of landscape painting, therefore, was not purely as an expression of beauty derived from nature, but it was also a reflection of modernity. Topographical Expansion through Visual Representation Exploration seems always to have accompanied modern development in colonial Taiwan. Starting early in 1896, at the beginning of the Japanese Occupation, the military bureau of the Taiwanese Sōtokufu (GovernmentGeneral )dispatched five teamstoinvestigate the buildingofrailwaylines.10 Mapmaking quickly became an essential resource for further expansion and construction. Exploration was costly, however, because the natural environment of Taiwan was untamed and unpredictable. The stereotype of Taiwan as a place full of headhunting aboriginals and fatal diseases did not alter significantly at the outset of Japanese Occu- The Beauty of the Untamed | 41 pation,11 even though modernization was efficiently implemented by the chief of the Public Welfare...